Thom@s From Norway, joined Oct 2000, 11951 posts, RR: 50 Posted (6 years 7 months 2 days 1 hour ago) and read 2142 times:
Yes, it is of course my computer. *sigh*
At first everything seems normal. The internet is working fine, browsing through folders and files works fine...
But as soon as I start using various programs, things slow down to the ridiciolous.
Examples:
* When making changes in the video editing program Pinnacle Studio which used to be done in a sec, it now takes up to a minute before the change is made. Other times, the program freezes and has to be closed by force.
* I am currently burning out two audio files onto a CD (yeah I know, just 2 songs), with a total size of 40MB, something which used to be done in under a minute.
It has now been nearly 15 minutes, and it just passed half way...
What the hell is going on? I can't remember anything happening to the computer which would cause this.
The problem occured around the time that I agreed to download some windows updates. This took forever too, so possibly the problem occured even before that. I never got more than "2% complete" on downloading the updates, even though it was running all day. I finally decided to abort the update, hoping things would speed up again.
Didn't work.
Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this problem?
If it takes nearly 30 minutes to burn out 40MB, I dread the day when I have to burn out a DVD.
Thom@s
"If guns don't kill people, people kill people - does that mean toasters don't toast toast, toast toast toast?"
Klaus From Germany, joined Jul 2001, 20902 posts, RR: 55 Reply 4, posted (6 years 7 months 2 days ago) and read 2124 times:
Quoting Thom@s (Reply 2): Will have to invest in a Anti virus program then..
As far as I remember, there are also several free packages you could use. Some of them contain spyware themselves, so I leave more concrete recommendations to others who have more experience with Windows pest control.
David L From United Kingdom, joined May 1999, 9248 posts, RR: 42 Reply 6, posted (6 years 7 months 2 days ago) and read 2106 times:
Quoting Thom@s (Thread starter): The problem occured around the time that I agreed to download some windows updates.
After certain Windows updates, it seems you can get a problem with helpsvc.exe running riot. If you don't use Windows Help then you can stop that process. Check Task Manager to see how much CPU time it's taking up.
Having said that, I have to say I've had similar problems with Pinnacle Studio, though not so much with Version 10 Plus. I ended up having to shorten the clip that the burn was "sticking" on. I don't think I ever tried dividing a problem clip into shorter clips, without losing anything - I just thought of that now.
Tmatt95 From United Kingdom, joined Sep 2005, 489 posts, RR: 0 Reply 7, posted (6 years 7 months 2 days ago) and read 2091 times:
It is always good to read the reviews on anti virus programs. There are a number of free programs out there on the market. I personally use:
antivir
(I also find CCleaner: http://www.ccleaner.com/ is good at cleaning the computer)
Jamie757 From , joined Dec 1969, posts, RR: Reply 12, posted (6 years 7 months 1 day 23 hours ago) and read 2036 times:
Quoting Klaus (Reply 1): Check for malware. Your computer might be infected.
I'd second that, programs I use are AVG anti-virus, Ad-Aware (to remove spyware) and I find Windows Defender to be fairly good too.
Have you tried defragging your hard-drive recently? May be of some help, however it may take 74632991 hours to complete if your system is running as slow as you describe.
Thom@s From Norway, joined Oct 2000, 11951 posts, RR: 50 Reply 14, posted (6 years 7 months 1 day 5 hours ago) and read 1935 times:
Quoting Jamie757 (Reply 12): Have you tried defragging your hard-drive recently? May be of some help, however it may take 74632991 hours to complete if your system is running as slow as you describe.
Quoting IFEMaster (Reply 13): Run a boot-time check disk and then defrag. You'd be amazed at the difference it can make. Especially if you've never done either of those.
I believe both these operations were made during the Windows online scan I performed. Everything has been cleaned up, but no improvement I'm afraid.
I guess I'll need a spyware / adware or antivirus program. Can anyone recommend a decent safe one? (With a link would be nice.)
Thom@s
"If guns don't kill people, people kill people - does that mean toasters don't toast toast, toast toast toast?"
Thom@s From Norway, joined Oct 2000, 11951 posts, RR: 50 Reply 16, posted (6 years 7 months 23 hours ago) and read 1919 times:
Quoting Kmh1956 (Reply 15): I don't think an online scan does a defrag.
Well it said "Now defragging your harddrive", and it did it to both harddrives. So I would guess it has done it, but it wouldn't hurt to try again.
However another weird thing has happened to the PC now... As soon as the screensaver comes on, instead of displaying the usual photos, it says "Could not find any image files in the folder".
But after a quick check, I found the images were still there. On the "preview" of the screensaver it worked like normal... but not when the screensaver actually came on.
I fear this is the beginning of something bad...
Thom@s
"If guns don't kill people, people kill people - does that mean toasters don't toast toast, toast toast toast?"
IFEMaster From , joined Dec 1969, posts, RR: Reply 17, posted (6 years 7 months 23 hours ago) and read 1916 times:
Quoting Thom@s (Reply 16): Well it said "Now defragging your harddrive", and it did it to both harddrives. So I would guess it has done it, but it wouldn't hurt to try again.
Quoting Thom@s (Reply 16):
I fear this is the beginning of something bad...
Seriously, run a boot-time check disk. Defrag won't touch any files currently in use by Windows, which is a significant amount. Defrag also doesn't do any kind of disk integrity checking or error correction, and no surface scan either. So again I say, run a boot-time check disk. Here's how...
Open My Computer. Right click on each drive/partition in turn and select Properties. On the 'Tools' tab, the first option if 'Error-checking'. Hit the 'Check Now' button and put a checkmark in both boxes on the pop-up window. Hit OK, and you'll get a message that you need to schedule a scan on the next reboot. Say Yes, and then reboot your computer. The reboot will take it in to a check disk mode, and depending on the disk size, number of files, any errors found and fixed etc., it might take a while
Bezoar From United States of America, joined Nov 2001, 805 posts, RR: 9 Reply 19, posted (6 years 7 months 18 hours ago) and read 1859 times:
I had the same kinds of problems with Pinnacle Studio. Perhaps they have some new updates to download now, but I tried their updates as of 3 months ago and serious problems remained: crashing, freezing, going so slow I didn't know if it was frozen or just super slow. I think it could easily be your problem.
Apparently, they release a new version that's been extremely buggy, and they are having trouble fixing things. If you go to the forums on the their website, you'll see lots of discussion about these kinds of things. Someone may offer some insight into what you can do. There may also be video card incompatibilities, etc.
Personally I would not recommend Pinnacle Studio to anyone.
"There are none so blind as those who will not see."
Palladium From Indonesia, joined Apr 2005, 270 posts, RR: 0 Reply 20, posted (6 years 7 months 17 hours ago) and read 1829 times:
Here some quick tips:
1. Get Norton Anti Virus and run a full system check.
2. What's your VGA Card? Memory?
you need to have a decent memory and VGA Card
3. Download an Anti spyware program and run it. Delete every spyware.
Most computers now should have 1 Gig Memory. Pentium 4 3.0 or above
RootsAir From Costa Rica, joined Feb 2005, 4180 posts, RR: 44 Reply 24, posted (6 years 6 months 4 weeks 17 hours ago) and read 1701 times:
Nothing beats my old Commodore 64 I have kept as a souvenir
A man without the knowledge of his past history,culture and origins is like a tree without roots
25 Kmh1956: Is this computer networked? If so, check your network connection. Be careful with these, as some anti-spyware programs ARE spyware.
26 Baroque: WADR I think the IBM 1620 would have beaten it into a cocked hat - whatever that is. This was back in the days of consoles of flashing lights. When y
27 Thom@s: Not sure what you mean... As in connected to another computer? If so, then no. That's what I'm worried about. When I got a anti spyware thing for my
28 IAH777: While we're on the subject of wonky 'puters, mine has an odd habit. If I've had it on for an hour, or so, approximately every fifteen minutes all of m
30 Klaus: If it's the computer you're posting from, of course it is networked - to the internet and thus to millions of other computers...!
31 Francoflier: After checking for viruses and malware/spyware/bots with the programs mentioned above, dont' forget to get a program to clean up your registry too. Th
32 Thom@s: *Slaps head* Of course... Well, since AVG has been mentioned fairly often, I think I'll go with that. Thom@s
33 Agill: Are you sure you have enough RAM in your computer? Some programs eat a lot of it and things get very slow. I mean you seem to only have this problem
34 Thom@s: I think there should be enought RAM... And it appears pretty much all programs I use are affected by the problem. They taken longer to open... and so
35 Thom@s: Ok, update: I have defragged both my harddrives, no improvement on the slow working computer. I downloaded AVG anti spyware. It keeps finding a few in
36 Agill: I'd do a reinstall and see if things improve. Your computer seem al borked up.
37 IFEMaster: You know...it could just be Windows. It's not unheard of for Windows just to start behaving oddly. Sounds like you've spent a long time trying to diag
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